Trump Orders CPB to End Funding for PBS and NPR; Supporters Push Back
President Donald Trump's executive order late Thursday instructing CPB to cease funding NPR and PBS may not have an immediate effect on stations and will likely be challenged as part of CPB’s existing lawsuit, which disputes executive branch jurisdiction over the private corporation (see 2504290067), attorneys told us. Trump followed up on the order Friday, again proposing eliminating federal CPB funding as part of his FY 2026 discretionary budget request. Meanwhile, some pro-CPB congressional appropriators are warily eyeing Trump’s pending request that Capitol Hill claw back $1.1 billion in advance funding for the entity (see 2504150052).
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Trump’s order instructs the CPB board to cease direct and indirect funding of NPR and PBS. The CPB’s governing statute bars it from supporting political parties, yet it “fails to abide by these principles to the extent it subsidizes” NPR and PBS, the order said. “Which viewpoints [those networks] promote does not matter,” it said. “What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events.” The order instructs Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to determine if NPR and PBS are complying with employment discrimination rules. In addition, it directs other agencies to halt any remaining grants or contracts with PBS and NPR.
CPB CEO Patricia Harrison said Friday that “CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority. Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government.”
CPB and attorneys who represent public broadcasters said the White House lacks authority to order CPB to end funding because CPB is a private corporation, not a federal agency. In the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act, Congress “expressly forbade” the federal government from exercising “direction, supervision, or control” over CPB, Harrison said. CPB made similar claims in its lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s removal of three Democratic CPB board members.
Trump’s “blatantly unlawful [order] threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming, as we have for the past 50-plus years,” PBS CEO Paula Kerger said in a statement. “We are currently exploring all options to allow PBS to continue to serve our member stations and all Americans.”
America’s Public Television Stations CEO Kate Riley said Trump’s order “defies the will of the American people and would devastate the public safety, educational and local service missions of public media.” It “would destroy the local-national partnership that is essential to local public television stations’ ability to provide their communities with the mix of local, regional, independent and national programming,” Riley added.
The practical effects of the order on funding are unclear, attorneys told us. PBS budgets its funding two years in advance, so the money that stations are relying on now comes from Congress’ advance CPB funding, which Trump’s rescission request will target. Since CPB controls the funding and is already opposing the order, one attorney representing noncommercial broadcasters told us they are advising clients that they don’t immediately need to do anything differently.
Defunding Concerns
The White House OMB said Trump’s call to zero out CPB funding is “consistent with the President’s efforts to decrease the size of the Federal Government to enhance accountability, reduce waste, and reduce unnecessary governmental entities.” Trump unsuccessfully proposed eliminating CPB’s funding throughout his first term. Congressional Republicans have shown growing interest since January in ending federal funding for public broadcasters amid rancor over what they claim is pro-Democratic bias in news coverage (see 2502030064).
Public broadcasting advocates are concerned that Trump could succeed in his CPB funding clawback because the Senate could bypass its normal 60-vote cloture threshold to approve rescission requests. Accordingly, a simple majority vote in the chamber, which has a 53-47 Republican advantage, could approve it and bypass Democrats’ objections.
Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., told us she needs to see the Trump administration’s exact wording of its CPB funding rescission request before she decides whether to back it. She's concerned in part about how clawing back advance funding may affect local public broadcasters’ emergency alert transmissions. “That’s a function that I don’t want to lose,” Capito said.
Senate LHHS ranking member Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin told us she and other Democrats are “having conversations now” to get at least some Republicans on board who oppose rescinding advance CPB funding. “I would hope that my [Senate Appropriations Committee] Republican colleagues would see fit to not advance that bill to the Senate floor,” she said. Rescissions “eviscerate [the panel’s] power, and I hope my Republican colleagues on the committee do not want” that.
House Appropriation LHHS ranking member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut told us she and other Democrats are “certainly going to fight like hell” against defunding CPB. House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., on Friday criticized Trump’s several actions against CPB as “yet another illegal attempt to consolidate power in the White House, erode the Constitution’s freedom of the press, and censor any viewpoints he deems inconsistent with his own.”